This painting is a section of a larger painting, cut from a pair of folding screens that featured scenes from the eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji. Remounted as a hanging scroll, this scene is from a chapter of the story known as “The Ivy.” Kaoru, the son of the novel’s main character, Genji, lies in bed, a folding screen shielding him from the evening wind in the hills of Uji. By the faint light of an oil lamp, a maidservant piques the young man’s interest with word of a young woman named Ukifune. The bright, thickly applied pigments are considered a hallmark of Sōtatsu’s studio, to which the painting has traditionally been attributed.
